Bar Mock Trial 2021

Despite Covid, despite lockdown and despite the usual heavy workload of year 12, the Bar Mock Trial group have kept meeting doggedly throughout the past year. In September we conducted auditions to select our barristers and witnesses, who would be appearing in the trial, and by October half term we had three groups who were working hard for the regional heats after Christmas:

Team 1: Charlie-Lee Hopkins, Oyin Adewale, Amelia Botting, Azaria Gayle and Amelie Wisniewska-Sadok

Team 2: David Grice, Libby Mardell-Lines, Maddie Hunter, Myfamwy Harlow and Jake Yilmaz

Team 3: Emily Mayes, Iona Dixon, Becky Kennard, Nyah Lythall and Libby Robertson

In the New Year, as we all know, the plug was pulled and both regional heats and national finals disappeared from the calendar. When we returned from lockdown, however, meetings resumed and soon we had been paired with the Boclair Academy from Scotland to go head to head with a partner school, remotely, on Saturday 15th May. Sadly Boclair had to withdraw at the last minute (because of the pressures of exam grading!) but we went ahead ourselves anyway, furnishing both prosecution and defence, in the presence of our local legal consultant Ash Hornby (an ex-Met Police Detective) who was fulsome in his praise of the standard of the performance.

The court case? Well, Sunny Peters (Maddie Hunter) was charged with causing criminal damage at a “Save Our Climate” demonstration at Juraxis Energy. She smashed the car window of a security guard Nav Hayer (Nyah Lythall) with her placard. The prosecution were able to argue that she had no ‘legal excuse’ and the jury found her guilty as charged despite the character witness of her best friend, Jaylen Adiche (Myfamwy Harlow) and the best efforts of her defence team. She is currently awaiting sentence.

Congratulations to all who took part – an excellent team effort!

Mr Spurgeon